Chakwera warns public officers, contractors

President Lazarus Chakwera has warned public officers against taking a laissez-faire attitude towards supervision of contractors working on government projects.

Speaking in Rumphi during the symbolic opening of Rumphi, Mchinji and Chikwawa teacher training colleges (TTCs) yesterday, he said failure to monitor government projects portrays a picture that duty-bearers are not doing their job.

Taking time to highlight his concerns, the President, who was accompanied by Vice President Saulos Chilima, stressed that if Malawi cannot be a country that follows standards then “we are not building for generations to come”.

He said lack of oversight on the progress of projects, easily leads contractors to build substandard structures.

Said Chakwera: “Just yesterday, I was speaking to some road contractors working on the Chitipa-Ilomba Road and warned them that they must not continue with substandard work.

“The SPC [Secretary to the President and Cabinet], you have seen for yourself that contractors are not doing the same work.”

He, however, hailed contractors who built the Rumphi TTC for a job well done.

The President’s warning comes two days after Centre for Social Accountability and Transparency asked the government to sanction and order the contractor of the K2 billion Machinga Secondary School classroom structures to start afresh.

The demand followed the circulation on social media of pictures of crumbling plaster on a  classroom block’s wall a few years after construction.

The pictures also show that the structures have been built of mud bricks coated with cement to appear like cement blocks.